In my first house working hard to bring it from a completely ruined foreclosure to a nice and modern home. The money came from hours in the tractor, imported mowers and my webshop. It would take another year of similar work, plus my store in Halmstad before house number two and the beginning of my career as it looks today.
So.. was this a good or bad place to be? No idea! For me, great. I suppose? Or?
Here is what some of my idols were up to when they were 25:
Warren Buffet lived in Omaha, where he was working as an investment salesman. Already on his path.
Mark Zuckerberg started making money :) Ha had been working hard with Facebook for five years and actually started making money on the site when he hit 25.
Mark Cuban, not that I’m a super fan, had just moved to Dallas, where he worked as a bartender. He shared a three bedroom apartment with six guys and spent his days driving around looking at big houses, imagining what it would be like to live in them.
Richard Branson had his record company going strong by 25.
Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks was working as a salesman for Xerox. While there he actually did a lot for a Swedish manufacturer of coffee makers. They liked him so much that they ended up recruiting him as he turned 26.
Roman Abramovich had invested in the black market. He managed to get many of the companies legit and was doing well at the time. (he ran into trouble with the Russian government in 26, but that’s another story..)
There are of course many, many more stories and I love reading about it. It’s easy to forget that most of the high achievers started amongst everybody else, then just decided to do more. If it worked for them, there is no reason why it wouldn’t work for us.